In the opening tense scene of director Renny Harlin's
action film, an operational rescue on a steep towering 4,000 foot
mountain peak in the Rocky Mountains was being attempted. Hot-shot
rescue worker Gabe Walker (Sylvester Stallone) climbed up to where
the two stranded climbers were perched on a narrow ledge - knee-injured
Hal Tucker (Michael Rooker) and his girlfriend Sarah (Michelle Joyner).

With assistance from a rescue helicopter, Walker called
for a transport line, and a steel cable was lowered from the chopper
and then extended over to another landing area where the chopper landed.
Hal was the first to harness himself and pull himself over on the taut
cable to the chopper. When it was nervous Sarah's turn (after Walker
called it "the best ride in the park"), and she was assured: "There's
nothing to it," she found herself dangling over the deep chasm
when her harness broke.

A 4,000 Foot Drop Into A Rocky Abyss

Walker made the risky decision to go out on the line
and daringly rescue her. She reached up with her right hand to grab
Walker's hand - and was suspended in mid-air by her one hand, while
screaming out: "I can't hold on..I don't want to die...I'm slipping...Please
don't let me fall." But she found herself slipping and losing
her grip, and when her glove came off in Walker's hand, she fell to
her death in the abyss below.

Groundhog Day (1993)

Director Harold Ramis' comedy posited that Pittsburgh
TV meterologist Phil Connors (Bill Murray) was forced to repeat the
same day (February 2nd) over and over again, beginning at 6 am (with
his clock radio playing Sonny & Cher's "I Got You, Babe").
He was in the town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to cover the annual
Groundhog Day festivities.

Once Phil Connors realized he would be repeatedly reincarnated,
he become seriously depressed and snapped, telling co-news producer
Rita (Andie MacDowell): "I've come to the end of me. There's no
way out now."

He looked for ways to end the cyclical loop of life.
He committed numerous acts of suicide (none of which killed him permanently):

Shortly afterwards, he told Rita: "I'm a god...I'm a god.
I'm not the God, I don't think." He explained further:
"I didn't just survive a wreck. I wasn't just blown up yesterday.
I have been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted, and
burned." Waitress Doris (Robin Duke), who was waiting on their
table showed extreme consternation. And then he added: "And every
morning, I wake up without a scratch on me, without a dent in the fender.
I am an immortal." Doris interrupted for their order: "The
special today is blueberry waffles....I could come back if you're not
ready."

Later, he confessed to Rita: "I've killed myself
so many times, I don't even exist anymore."

Steven Spielberg's adventure film (with science-fiction
elements) was a big hit in the early 1990s, becoming one of the highest-grossing
films of all time. It was notable for its groundbreaking CGI special
effects and won the Best Visual Effects Oscar.

In Jurassic Park (a theme park populated with dinosaurs
and other prehistoric life) located on an island off Costa Rica, a
giant, ferocious, carnivorous Tyrannosaurus Rex (computer-generated
and modeled) attacked the stranded tour cars. It occurred at the same
time that the park's security system was shut down.

Cowardly lawyer Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero) abandoned
the kids, Lex Murphy (Ariana Richards) and younger brother Tim (Joseph
Mazzello). He fled to a flimsy, thatch-roofed toilet shack where he
thought he could be undetected in one of the stalls.

The T-Rex first demolished the wooden shack by bursting
through its coed-signed front door and collapsing its four walls, revealing
him helplessly cowering and sitting there.

One Tasty Morsel in the Toilet for a Tyrannosaurus
Rex

With his hiding place demolished, the dinosaur approached,
chomped into him, picked him up, swung him around and then feasted
on him in one large bite.

The famous "Hall of Mirrors" scene from the 1948 film
was cleverly recreated in the film's conclusion, set in the back of
an old revival theatre. The characters reenacted the scene
- life imitating art - as it played behind them on the screen.

Hello
Paul. Didn't you expect me?...You made a lot of promises to me, over
the years. And then, you decided to dump me for that young model...It's
late for excuses...I'm aiming at you, lover. Of course, killing you
is killing myself...But you know, I'm pretty tired of both of us.

Philadelphia (1993)

Producer/director Jonathan Demme's dramatic film was
one of the first realistic, big-budget, mainstream Hollywood treatments
of AIDS (it came after the HBO-TV docu-drama And the Band Played
On (1993)), garnering two Oscars (Best Actor for Tom Hanks, and
Best Original Song, "Streets of Philadelphia"
by Bruce Springsteen).

In the film's final hospital scene, dying AIDS patient
Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) was with his long-term male lover Miguel
Alvarez (Antonio Banderas). Family and friends had just bid him farewell.
His father briefly said: "Goodnight, son. Try to get some rest,
okay? Okay. I love you, Andy." His supportive mother Sarah (Joanne
Woodward) had whispered: "Goodnight, my angel. My sweet boy."

Alone when he dimmed the lights, Andrew told Miguel: "Miguel,
I'm ready," and then removed his own oxygen mask.

In the final scene during the reception held in the Beckett
home following the funeral, mourners watched home movies of Andrew's
younger days.

The Piano (1993, NZ/Australia/Fr.)

As mute, stubborn, pale-skinned 19th century Scottish
woman Ada McGrath (Oscar-winning Holly Hunter) was being taken away
on a Maori boat, she asked erotic partner and tattooed estate-manager
George Baines (Harvey Keitel) to throw the "spoiled" piano
overboard.

The piano plunged into the sea and began to drown Ada
underwater - her leg had become ensnared by the piano's rope.

She sank with it - attached to it by the rope, but then
decided against suicide (while envisioning her own death) and chose
to live:

What a death! What a chance! What a surprise! My
will has chosen life!? Still it has had me spooked and many others
besides!

She kicked free from her boot and swam back to the surface,
where she was reborn. She was hauled onto the boat by natives.

In the film's epilogue, Ada told about her new life:

"I
teach piano now in Nelson. George has fashioned me a metal finger tip.
I am quite the town freak which satisfies! I am learning to speak.
My sound is still so bad I feel ashamed. I practice only when I'm alone
and it is dark. At night, I think of my piano in its ocean grave, and
sometimes of myself floating above it. Down there, everything is so
still and silent that it lulls me to sleep. It is a weird lullaby and
so it is -- it is mine."

(As the camera continued to pull back, Ada was seen dead,
still tied to the piano. Had her reverie of rebirth and life been only
a fantasy at the moment of her death?)

Ada's Voice-Over Reverie of Death Underwater

Ada's last sentence, and the last line of the film was
a Thomas Hood quote: "There is a silence where hath been no sound.
There is a silence where no sound may be. In the cold grave under the
deep deep sea."

Near-Drowning

Shadowlands (1993, UK)

In this tearjerking British romance-biopic film by
director Richard Attenborough, bachelor Oxford University author
C. S. "Jack"
Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) (of The Narnia Chronicles) established
a platonic yet loving relationship with feisty American fan, a divorced
poet named Joy Gresham (Debra Winger), whom he eventually befriended
and married.

Lewis chronicled his own reactions to Joy's premature
death in 1960 in his book A Grief Observed (1961) - the inspiration
for the film. Realizing she didn't have much time to live, with death
imminent from advanced cancer (of the bone), he proposed to her (and
shortly later married her) in her London hospital room:

Will you marry this foolish, frightened old man, who
needs you more than he can bear to say,
who loves you even though he hardly knows how?

And then, remarkably, Joy went into remission ("could
be months, could be weeks") but the cancer was still very advanced
and she would not live for another year. She was removed from the
London hospital and taken to Lewis' home in Oxford. They experienced
some very happy moments together, but then the pain and cancer returned.

After a kiss, and then after a period of sleep, she
admitted she was tired and about to die ("I just don't wanna leave you...Too
much pain...You have to let me go...I've loved you so"). He
tried to comfort her, and then prayed when she expired:

Don't talk, my love. Just rest. My love, just rest.
Shh. Just rest. I love you, Joy. I love you so much. You made me
so happy. I didn't know I could be so happy. You're the truest
person I have ever known...
Sweet Jesus. Be with my beloved wife, Joy. Forgive me if I
love her too much. Have mercy on us both.

At Joy's service, the minister intoned: "We therefore
commit the body of thy servant, Joy to the elements: Earth to earth,
ashes to ashes, dust to dust." Lewis was told: "Thank God for your
faith, Jack. Only faith makes sense of times like this. I know."

Following Joy's death, Lewis was in shock, but remained
stoic and resigned to her death, although he was confused about
the brutal fact of human suffering and death: "I can't see her anymore.
I can't remember her face... I'm so afraid of
never seeing her again. Of thinking that suffering is just suffering
after all. No cause. No purpose. No pattern...There's nothing to
say. I know that now. I've just come up against a bit of
experience, Warnie. Experience is a brutal teacher. But you learn.
My God, you learn." He even questioned his own faith and God:

Just don't tell me it's all for the best, that's
all...God knows, but does God care?... We're the creatures, aren't
we? We're the rats in the cosmic laboratory. I've no doubt the
experiment is for our own good, but, uh, it still makes God the
vivisectionist, doesn't it?...It won't do. It's this bloody awful
mess, and that's all there is to it.

Then, he
abruptly shared tortured grief and uncontrollable weeping with her
young son Douglas (Joseph Mazzello) in an attic setting:

Lewis: When my mother died, I was your age. I thought
that if I prayed for her to get better, and if I really believed
she'd get better, then she wouldn't die. But she did.
Douglas: It doesn't work.
Lewis: No, it doesn't work.
Douglas: I don't care.
Lewis:
I loved
your mother very much. Perhaps I loved her too much. She knew that.
She said to me, 'Is it worth it?' 'cause she knew what it would
be like later. Doesn't seem fair, does it?
Douglas: I don't see why she had to get sick.
Lewis: No, nor me. But, uh, you can't hold onto things, Douglas.
You have to let them go.
Douglas: Jack...Do you believe in heaven?
Lewis: Yes, I do.
Douglas: I don't believe in heaven.
Lewis: That's okay.
Douglas: I would like to see her again.
Lewis (sobbing): Me too.

Joy's Advanced Cancer DiagnosedGetting Married in the HospitalSoon to DieJoy to Lewis: "You have to let me go" C.S. Lewis Grieving with Stepson Douglas

After being threatened "Make
your answers genuine," Worley was asked about the whereabouts
of his fleeing son Clarence (Christian Slater) after he had committed
a cocaine drug deal theft. Knowing that he would die anyway, Worley
responded with bold and inflammatory insults (involving both eggplants
and cantaloupes!)

Vincenzo had seemed to be amused by Worley's rambling,
insulting chatter about his own personal history and how his Sicilian
parentage was spawned from "n---ers":

You're Sicilian, huh?...You know, I read a lot. Especially
about things, about history. I find that s--t fascinating. Here's
a fact I don't know whether you know or not. Sicilians were spawned
by niggers... It's a fact. Yeah, you see, uh, Sicilians have black
blood pumpin' through their hearts. If you don't believe me, uh,
you can look it up. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, you see,
uh, the Moors conquered Sicily. And the Moors are niggers. You
see, way back then, uh, Sicilians were like wops in northern Italy.
They all had blonde hair and blue eyes. But, uh, well, then the
Moors moved in there, well, they changed the whole country. They
did so much f--kin' with Sicilian women, huh, that they changed
the whole blood-line forever. That's why blonde hair and blue eyes
became black hair and dark skin. You know, it's absolutely amazing
to me to think that to this day, hundreds of years later, that
uh, that Sicilians still carry that nigger gene... I'm quotin'
history. It's written. It's a fact. It's written...Your ancestors
are niggers...Hey, yeah, and, and your great, great, great, great
grandmother f--ked a nigger, yeah, and she had a half-nigger kid.
Now, if that's a fact, tell me, am I lying? 'Cause you, you're
part eggplant. (Laughter)

Coccotti laughed, insulted back: "You're a cantaloupe,"
stood up, kissed Worley on one cheek, walked away, then turned around
with an automatic, put the barrel to Worley's skull, and pumped six
bullets into his head and body, claiming: "I haven't killed
anybody since 1994."